


A is for Android

by DamsonDaForge



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Next Generation (Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Grief, Loss, M/M, Spoilers for Nemesis, Unrequited Love, daforge - Freeform, spoilers for picard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:33:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26732185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DamsonDaForge/pseuds/DamsonDaForge
Summary: Years after the events in Nemesis, Geordi is still struggling with his loss.  Grief will compel him onto a dark and dangerous path.
Relationships: Data/Geordi La Forge
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	A is for Android

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a painful examination of grief and loss. It will be a deep dive into the events of the movie Nemesis and the show Picard. Spoilers are therefore inevitable for both.

Will sat down behind his desk in the Ready Room. Deanna had been on attachment with the JAG office on Starbase 132 for the last few months. It had been tough, being apart for so long, but her tour was nearly over and she’d be back on board the _Enterprise_ in the next week.

He was updating her with the latest personnel news, so that she’d be up to speed when she returned.

“I’ve just received news that Commander Shelby’s promotion has gone through. They’ll be offering her the _Lincoln_ and she’ll bite their hands off.”

Deanna smiled. Will’s relationship with his First Officer was… complicated and that had made the last four and a half years interesting, to say the least. Shelby had lost none of that hunger or ambition and Will genuinely wished her well.

“And?” Deanna nudged gently.

Though they were parsecs apart, she could still read him like an open book.

“I’m going to offer Geordi the post of Executive Officer. You’ve picked up on it, at his last few evaluations. He’s in a rut and I think a new challenge could be what he needs. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a great idea.”

“You think that he’ll go for it?”

“I hope so.”

That wasn’t quite the resounding ‘yes’ that Will had been hoping for, but they both knew they needed to do something. There was nothing overt in Geordi’s performance reviews, but there was a sense that he was going through the motions. That he no longer displayed the passion and drive that had characterised his service throughout the years that Will had known him. He was worried about his friend and as his Captain, he was going to do everything he could to get Geordi back on track.

“Good. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“See you soon. I love you.”

“Love you.”

Will ended the transmission and tapped his commbadge.

“Riker to La Forge. Can you join me in my Ready Room?”

“Aye, sir.”

A couple of minutes later, having made his way up from the depths of Engineering, Will’s door chimed.

“Come in.”

Geordi entered and stood in front of the desk.

“Have a seat,” said Will. Once Geordi was seated, he continued. “Commander Shelby is now officially Captain Shelby. She’ll be getting the news right about now.”

Geordi looked a little baffled. Clearly, he didn’t know why Will was telling him this in the privacy of his Ready Room.

“Good for her,” La Forge said. “If I hear a howl of triumph echo around the ship, at least I’ll know what it’s about.”

Will smiled. “So I have a vacancy. Do you want it?”

Geordi’s demeanour went from mild confusion to genuine shock.

Being fixed with the penetrating gaze from those silver-blue eyes still had the power to unnerve Will. There was something unflinching about them, especially when Geordi sometimes didn’t blink for an unsettling amount of time.

“I’m… I… I was not expecting that,” his chief engineer said eventually.

“You don’t have to answer right away. Think about it.”

A strange expression had settled onto Geordi’s face and his eyes lost some of their intensity.

“I don’t think I need to,” he said slowly, quietly.

Will raised his eyebrows, hoping for good news. “Well?”

“I… uh… I think I’m done,” Geordi said.

“I’m sorry. What?” said Will, not sure he’d understood.

“I think I’m done,” he repeated, sounding as though he had just realised this for himself. “I think I’m done with Starfleet.” He laughed and it was an odd, hollow, humourless sound.

“Geordi?” Will said. “What are you saying? You’re… you’re quitting?”

“Yeah,” said La Forge. “I think I am.” He sat back in the chair smiling slightly, looking bewildered.

“What’s brought this on?” 

He knew his friend was in a rut, but this had come so far out of left field, Will’s head was spinning.

“I guess I’ve been feeling pretty aimless for a while. I thought it would pass. It hasn’t.”

“But you’ve just made full Commander, just last year. I don’t understand. I thought that meant you wanted your own ship one day.”

Will couldn’t imagine making that huge commitment, doing all that extra work to just throw it away a few months later.

“I thought so too,” said Geordi. “I thought it would… I don’t know, give me back that fire?”

“It hasn’t?”

Geordi shook his head. 

“Talk to your dad?” said Riker, hoping La Forge Snr might be able to knock some sense into his son.

“God… that’ll be a conversation.”

Will knew that Geordi was third-generation Starfleet on his dad’s side and that if anyone could talk him round, it would be his father.

“I know he was made up when you got your promotion.”

“It was the first time I really saw him smile since Mom,” Geordi said. “Fuck.”

“It’s a huge decision. Don’t do anything about it till you talk to your dad. Deanna is back in a few days. Have dinner with us when she’s back and we’ll talk it all over, alright?”

“Okay. I’m gonna head back to Engineering?”

“Sure.”

Once Geordi had left, Will sent a message to Deanna but she didn’t respond immediately.

Geordi announcing he might leave felt like a very particular sort of betrayal and it had happened so abruptly. Clearly it was not a conversation either of them had been expecting to have.

“Damn it, Geordi,” Will muttered out loud.

His dependable, damaged, brilliant friend. Will had worked alongside Geordi longer than anyone in his career, even Deanna. The thought of him no longer _being there_ made Will feel very suddenly isolated and very suddenly alone.

Riker shook himself. He was the captain of the flagship and he needed to pull up out of this. People moved on all the time. It was inevitable that some were going to hurt that much more than others.

*~*~*~*

It was clear that if Geordi had taken a bat’leth to his father, he couldn’t have been more wounded. 

“You know I’ll support you, if that is really what you want,” his dad said, shock still showing on his face.

By taking that next career step, Geordi had signalled that he wanted to follow in his mother’s footsteps. His father could not have been more proud. As a way to honour her memory, re-joining the Command stream with a view to eventually captaining his own ship took some beating.

“I’m sorry if this has come a little bit out of the blue.”

“A little bit is the understatement of the century, Geordi. Have you really thought about this?”

“I’ve had the feeling that something’s not right for a long time. You know when I made Commander? Everybody was happy and they had that party here and you nearly cried… I didn’t really feel anything. After all that work and all those extra hours, I thought I would but… I felt nothing.”

“You’re worrying me now. That doesn’t sound right. Why didn’t you say something?”

“Deanna knew. She knows…” Geordi had to break off as tears suddenly swam into his vision and spilled down his face.

“Oh, son,” said his father. “Oh, Geordi.”

It took him a minute to regain his composure.

“She said that I use work and the study and the exams as a way of blocking out the grief. He’s been gone almost five years and it feels like I only just lost him.”

And then the tears did come, from both Geordi and his father.

“There are times,” said his father through his own grief, “when your mom’s loss still takes me to my knees.”

Geordi looked up at the screen, blurred as it was by his own tears. 

“Are there good days?” his father asked.

Geordi shook his head. “Not really.”

“I think you need to get off that ship,” his father said firmly. “You need to get off that treadmill and you need time to try to start to heal.”

“You think I should leave?” The relief washed over him. His father understood. Or course he did.

“God knows, I don’t want you to throw your career away. Your mother would give me hell. I think you need to take a sabbatical, Geordi. Go and do something different for six months or a year. You’ve got offers.”

He nodded. A steady stream of opportunities landed in his in-tray every week from universities, civilian institutions and private companies who were always trying to lure away experienced Starfleet officers. And that was without the transfer opportunities within the service. He paid them little heed, junking most without even opening them.

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Geordi said, seeing for the first time in a long time that there were possibilities other than treading water and trying not to drown.

“You don’t have to walk away from everything you worked so hard for. And when you’re ready, if you’re ready, Starfleet will still be here.”

“Yeah,” said Geordi. “Yeah, it would be.”

“Or maybe you’ll find a nine to five desk job is what you’ve always wanted,” his father teased.

“That’s a low blow, Dad,” said Geordi, sketching a smile through the remnants of his tears.

“Hey, I’ll fight as dirty as I need to.”

“You crawl around in swamps for a living. How could I compete?”

“You can’t. I’ve got you beat on that score.”

The conversation fell into a comfortable silence.

“It’s late,” said Geordi after a little while.

“Yeah, it is here too. Let me know what you decide, okay? Or just call me to talk.”

“I will.”

“Take care.”

“You too, Dad.”

“I mean it, Geordi. You need to take care of yourself.”

“I promise I will.”

His father nodded. “Night, son.”

“Goodnight, Dad.”

Months and months ago, when Deanna had asked him if he still talked to Data, the question had caught him utterly off-guard. A huge surge of guilt filled his mind and he knew he wouldn’t be able to lie to her. So he’d said yes and got upset but then Deanna had told him it wasn’t anything he should feel ashamed about or uncomfortable admitting. It was normal.

Geordi needed to talk to him now, but if Deanna had known what talking to Data really meant, she probably would have had him committed. 

Five large footlockers, if not exactly hidden under his bed, were concealed there, out of sight. Geordi pulled them out so that they were lined up against each other and then he removed the lids. Each one was a stand-alone computer core and Geordi proceeded to link them together with lengths of silver opti-cable. He pressed the five on switches and watched as the yellow and blue control panels flickered into life. Geordi sat back down at his desk. He keyed in the access code to the programme which was now running from the floor of his bedroom.

“Hey, Data,” said Geordi.

 _Good evening, Geordi. How was your day?_ appeared in text on the screen of his computer.

“Pretty weird.”

Without a positronic net to run on, this wasn’t Data. At best, it was an approximation of his response based on the last complete back-up copy of his programme. That’s what was in those footlockers, Data’s last back-up from… from all those years ago.

He knew he was technically in violation of about a million rules and regulations, but he had felt compelled to copy Data’s back-up from the main computer. It gave him some small solace to know that this piece of Data had survived and shortly afterwards, he had written a batch of code which had allowed him to converse with the programme.

It would have been fairly easy to synthesise Data’s voice and have the programme speak, but even after five years, Geordi still wasn’t ready to hear him. It would have been too, too painful to have his voice and his words but not his presence. For that same reason, Geordi never played Data’s log entries. He couldn’t bear to hear him and so the unique cadence of his voice only ever sounded in Geordi’s dreams.

“You remember I got made up to full Commander?” Geordi said.

 _Yes, sir,_ spelled the programme.

Geordi smiled. “Data, you don’t have to call me sir.”

_No, sir, however it is appropriate, now that you out-rank me._

“Never mind. Captain Riker offered me First Officer. Shelby’s made captain and he offered me the post.”

_Congratulations._

“I turned him down and… I might be leaving Starfleet.”

_I do not understand._

“I’m not sure I do, either.”

_Your decision to pursue promotion would suggest you felt your future lay with Starfleet. Is that no longer the case?_

“Possibly. Probably. I guess I don’t really know. My Dad suggested a sabbatical and it’s about the only thing that has made any sense to me recently.”

_What will you do? Where will you go?_

“I don’t know. There are a lot of options. I haven’t really looked into it yet.”

_Geordi, will I be coming with you?_

“Of course you will. I’d never leave you behind. Never.”

_I am glad that we will be together._

Geordi, swiping at sudden tears, didn’t reply. He closed off the programme and did likewise with the computer cores. When they were stowed back under his bed, Geordi sat up for several hours, narrowing down his options and sending out a few enquiries. He expected to feel more than he did. Maybe he’d forgotten how to feel things that weren’t grief or loss or pain. Numb relief was about as close as he could get to an emotion about it all. 

Whatever happened and wherever he went next, Geordi was now certain that he would be leaving the _Enterprise_ , and more than likely, he wouldn’t be coming back.


End file.
